Circles of Confusion (32 page)

Claire slid to the floor, cast around for her watch and strapped it on her wrist. She pressed the button on the side to light up the dial. Two in the morning. They would clean up here and then head straight to the airport to take the first available flight to New York. Should she wear her pregnant clothes or the outfit Susie had loaned her? While neither choice was appealing, the maternity smock had the advantage of serving, if necessary, as a semi-disguise while they left the building. She resolved to buy new clothes in the airport, even if she ended up in New York wearing a My Grandpa Went to Portland, Oregon, and All He Got Me Was This Lousy T-shirt T-shirt.

Her clothes lay mingled with Dante's, and the sight of their pant legs intertwined made Claire smile. While she was pulling her own pants free, Dante's wallet fell out of the back pocket of his Levi's. She paused for a second, listening. The water was still running and Dante was still singing. "Darling, won't you ease my worried mind ..." One little peek wouldn't hurt. Did he have a library card? An old girlfriend's phone number? She walked to the light of the doorway and flipped it open.

Her heart made a terrible twist in her chest. In the very first vinyl window was a photo of Dante and another woman. If that was all it had been, Claire could have accepted it. After all, he had had a life before her, just as she had. But this photo showed a Dante she had never seen, his hair combed back into a ponytail, formally dressed in a black tuxedo, the dazzling white of his shirt punctuated by black studs. His head was turned slightly as he looked at something off-camera, and his arms lay loose around a woman's waist, her hands clasped in his. Her wide-spaced blue eyes looked directly at the viewer. In any other circumstances, Claire would have liked the woman's confident grin, but not now, not when its blond-haired owner's face was framed by a wedding veil.

All the blood rushed to Claire's own face. She had been so stupid! If people had been willing to kill her to get their hands on a twenty- million-dollar painting, would it be so hard to sleep with her? Dante had gotten her right where he wanted her, had even managed to assure himself of the painting's value. And now the painting rested in his satchel. She wondered where he planned on leaving her. Outside the building? In the airport?

Only a few seconds had passed, but everything had changed. Claire quickly shuffled through the rest of the contents of his wallet, trying to figure out what other lies he had told her. Her fingers found his driver's license. Dante Bonner was really his name, he was the age he had told her, his hair and eye color weren't the result of dyes or tinted lenses. He had two Visa cards, a Chevron gas card, an AT&T calling card, a three-quarter-filled card that would eventually entitle him to a free book at a bookstore in Greenwich Village. And he had money—two $1 bills, one $5, nine $20s, three $50s and a $100.

He also had a scrap of paper pushed to the very bottom of the bill compartment. All doubts that she might have been jumping to conclusions vanished. It seemed to be notes from a telephone conversation, block printing on a torn piece of yellow lined paper. Reading it, Claire felt a snake uncoil in her belly. "IFAR has no records, thus prob. of living claimant slim ... highly collectible, highly portable ... easily worth $25 mil +... buy w/no provenance & no proof of ownership.''

Claire returned Dante's wallet to his pants, but kept the piece of paper. By the time he knew it was missing she intended to be long gone. Moving quickly, she went into the next room and transferred the painting from his satchel to her backpack. Then she went back into the X-ray room and pulled on her pants, slipped on her shoes. Since her maternity outfit lacked anything as practical as a pocket, after she got dressed she tucked the note in her bra. Over the drone of the wind outside, she became aware of the sound of her own breathing, shallow and fast, with a little moan at the end of every exhalation.

The water was no longer running in the bathroom. "Like a fool, still in love with you. You've got my whole world upside down." Dante was moving around, wiping away the traces of his having been there. He probably wished he could do the same thing with her, make it be so that she would forget all about his existence. No wonder he had so easily speculated about Troy's intentions—he had already thought it all through himself. Was he planning on flying to Europe, where he could sell the painting clandestinely through a disreputable dealer in a former Communist country? Or did he already have a buyer lined up in the United States, a collector with lots of money made in the stock market or software, who wouldn't question too closely where such a beauty had come from?

Claire walked over to the window, ready, when the bathroom door opened, to pretend she was admiring the lights of the city. A good poker face had never been one of her strengths.

Outside, the streetlights revealed a world in motion. The awnings of the conference center across the street flapped in the wind. The black branches of the trees that bordered the parking lot lashed the pavement like whips. The window itself hummed with the wind, which was like the roar of a vacuum cleaner that occasionally sputtered and then surged to life again.

Although it was the middle of the night, the streets weren't deserted. There were a few cars driving down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and even a man standing under a streetlight in front of the shuttered Burgerville across the street. A man holding binoculars to his face as he scanned both entrances to the building.

When he took the binoculars away from his eyes, even from sixteen stories up and half a block away, Claire recognized him immediately.

Troy.

Troy Nowell. Well. The man who had told her her painting was worth nothing must have changed his mind in a big way, enough to make him eager to track her down. The wind couldn't ruffle Troy's close-cropped hair, but it had turned his buttoned-up trenchcoat into a sail.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Dante came out, wearing only a pair of black briefs. The dark hair on his chest was in the rough shape of a butterfly. "Layla, you got me on my knees, Layla, I'm begging darling, please ..." He stopped singing when he saw Claire's face. "What's the matter?"

At least now Claire had an answer for him. She pointed out the window.

It was, Dante argued, unsafe to leave the building while Troy was watching. They would wait until morning, then mingle with the office workers and slip away. Claire privately decided that might be a good time to lose Dante, too, in a place where she knew every street and alley. While he sketched out his plan, Dante's hands kept touching Claire, stroking her shoulder, patting her knee, combing an errant curl out of her eyes. At one point he even leaned over to kiss her cheek, and Claire couldn't help but think of Judas. How could Dante betray her with such ease?

"You're being awfully quiet."

Claire offered him the smallest possible smile, then walked into the reception area. Without warning, it felt as if the world was falling away from under her feet. Her stomach lurched, and she reached out to grab the edge of the receptionist's desk. "Do you feel that?"

"What are you talking about?”

"The building. It's moving. I can feel it swaying under my feet."

Dante nodded, seemingly unfazed. "Tall buildings are designed to do that. I read someplace that the average skyscraper can move eight feet in any direction."

Claire felt sick. Now that she knew the building really was moving, the swaying seemed more pronounced. She wanted to be back on solid ground. To avoid making conversation with Dante, she snapped on the radio that sat on the receptionist's desk, twisting the dial until she picked up KXL.

After a few minutes of sports talk, the weather report came on.

"The time is two twenty-eight, twenty-eight past two. Repeating our top local story: the National Weather Service has issued a high wind warning for the Willamette Valley. The storm is scheduled to set down here sometime in the next two hours. It has already hit Newport, and our reporter, Bob LeBart, is on the line. Bob, what can you tell us?"

"Well, Diane, it's a pretty amazing sight. I went outside a few minutes ago and could barely stay on my feet. We can all be very thankful that this storm has hit in the middle of the night, when most people are at home asleep. Otherwise it might be far more serious. We've just had a report that a metal roof was lifted right off a Shari's restaurant, but we don't know if anyone was hurt. So many telephone lines are down that it may take some time before we really know the extent of any damages. One thing is sure, though— there will be plenty of property damage. And as soon as more information is available, we'll bring you an update. This is Bob LeBart in Newport, Oregon."

"And this is Diane Harburg in the KXL studio. In Portland, forecasters are telling us they can't exactly predict whether the storm will pack the same punch as it has in Newport. If it does, we may be looking at something the size of the famous Columbus Day storm—" Claire snapped off the radio. She didn't want to be reminded of the day she was born. Here she was, thirty-five years old, and she still couldn't judge men.

Dante patted the exam room table. "Why don't you come over here for a second."

"I don't know about you, but I need to sleep." Her words were curter than she had intended. Did her voice betray her new knowledge?

"Then I'll make us up a little bed." He rummaged in the cupboard and came up with a couple of modesty drapes, which were like undersized sheets. "And I'll behave like a perfect gentleman. I'd love to watch you sleeping."

It was Dante who slept, however, and Claire who watched. They slept in the X-ray room, which offered the widest exam table, but it was still so narrow that they were forced to nest together like two commas. Claire tried to will herself to relax so that Dante wouldn't feel her tension. Against the cage of her ribs, she felt the slow beat of his traitor's heart. After she heard Dante's breathing slow and deepen, Claire raised herself up on one elbow and looked at him for a long moment. His generous mouth was slack and vulnerable, the bridge of his nose more prominent with his dark eyes shuttered. Even from a few inches away, Claire found herself observing Dante as if from a great distance. He was still a beautiful man, but she told herself that his beauty no longer had the power to reach her.

What plans did Dante have for her? Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to have her out of the picture altogether, no inconvenient woman coming forward with tales of how a painting should really be hers, some blabbermouth who might make even a secretive collector reconsider? Could he be thinking of silencing her forever? And what part had he played in the death, destruction and disappearances that had haunted her since she opened that suitcase? As she watched

Dante's seemingly open face, the building groaned and swayed under them like an old ship on rough seas.

"Claire!"

The sound broke through the skin of Claire's restless sleep.

"Clai—!" The voice was abruptly muffled, but Claire had heard enough to know whose it was. Charlie, with her characteristic rolled r that turned her name from something plain into something exotic.

Dante laid a cautioning hand on her arm as she started to get up. "Wait!" he hissed in her ear. "It might be a—"

Claire shook his hand free and got to her feet. "Charlie!" She ran into the next room, not thinking, only knowing that her darkest fears were evaporating as quickly as her fragmented dreams. Charlie was alive!

She stopped short. There was Charlie, but Paul Roberts's hand muffled her mouth. When he saw Claire, he looped his arm around Charlie's neck in a parody of friendliness, grinning humorlessly. On Charlie's other side stood Karl Zehner, his gun drawn.

"Claire, don't come out." Charlie finished her sentence almost under her breath. She wore what appeared to be a large man's white T-shirt that billowed around her knees. On her feet were her trademark pink tennis shoes, now smudged and dirty.

Paul's eyes took in the stroller and Claire's maternity top, slack without her strap-on belly. He waved his finger in mock admonishment. "One baby and another on the way—haven't you heard about overpopulation?" The smile fell from his face. He turned to Karl and held out his hand for the gun. "Tie them up." Where was Dante, Claire wondered. And then hoped that he had sense enough to stay put in the unlit X-ray room. He might have been planning to steal the painting from her, but at least he had never pointed a gun in her direction.

Karl pushed Claire into a faded orange waiting room chair. While he used the flat cord from one of the telephones to tie her hands behind her back, Claire kept her eyes on Charlie. "Are you okay?" Her friend's face was pale and pleated with tiredness, but Claire couldn't see any bruises or other marks on her body.

"I'm surviving." There was the ghost of a smile on Charlie's lips. It disappeared when Karl jerked her hands behind her and began to lash them together.

Claire's eyes swung between the two men. "So you two work together?"

Paul answered for them both. "He works for me."

Karl made one last knot, then stood up and took the gun back from Paul. He gestured in Claire's direction. "We will ask the questions. Where is the painting?"

"In a locker at the airport." Claire tried to sound as if she meant it.

"No, it isn't. You were watched there. And we have searched your house—-twice. So tell me where the painting is, unless you would like to see your friend die now."

He pressed the gun against Charlie's temple, hard enough that Claire saw the skin dimple. Her friend's faded blue eyes regarded her calmly. Outside the flags cracked in the wind.